Rain fell steadily in the neon haze of Tokyo. The hum of life moved on: trains screeched, crosswalks blinked, and umbrellas floated like jellyfish in the evening crowd.

But Yuto wasn’t listening to any of it.

He stood on the rooftop of his apartment building, shirt soaked, staring at the faint crimson symbol still glowing on his palm.

It had been three days since he woke up.

Three days since the mirror brought him back from a world of swords and gods.

And he couldn’t shake the feeling that…

**Something followed him back.**

---

## **✧ ✧ ✧**

He first noticed it in the classroom.

Someone whispered his name behind him—except no one had spoken. The room went cold. The lights flickered. When he blinked, he saw a faint shimmer in the corner: a mark like a sigil, burned into empty air.

Later, in the mirror at home, he caught a glimpse of a woman with silver eyes—his mother.

But she wasn’t *here*. She was still in the other world. Wasn’t she?

He turned. No one.

---

## **✧ ✧ ✧**

On the fourth night, the moon turned red.

Not just tinted. Not refracted by clouds.

It **bled**.

Yuto stood in the middle of the street as others walked past, oblivious. The sky above him pulsed, and a voice whispered through the cracks in reality:

> “The Gate was broken…”

> “But the *chain* still holds.”

A burning rune appeared in the sky—one he hadn’t seen before.

It wasn’t from the old world.

This was *new*.

And it was calling to him.

---

## **✧ ✧ ✧**

That same night, someone broke into Yuto’s apartment.

He heard nothing. No footsteps. No doors. Just silence, until he opened his eyes and saw **her**.

A girl, not older than seventeen. Dressed in a school uniform with a cloak of ash-colored threads wrapped over her shoulders. Her eyes glowed faint violet, and her hand held a small black dagger covered in sigils.

“You’re the Echo-Touched,” she whispered. “They told me you'd be reborn here.”

Yuto rose slowly from his bed.

“Who are you?”

She tilted her head.

> “I'm the next one they summoned.”

> “And I'm here to kill you before the chains awaken.”

---

---

The girl moved like a shadow—quiet, graceful, deadly.

Yuto barely had time to raise his arm before the dagger kissed the air between them. A split-second instinct kicked in: the sigil on his palm ignited, casting a red shield of light.

The dagger struck it—and bounced off with a hiss.

The girl’s eyes narrowed. “So it’s true. The Crimson Sigil survived.”

She lunged again.

---

✧ ✧ ✧

The fight tore through Yuto’s small Tokyo apartment.

Shelves shattered. Glass exploded. A warding glyph flared over his bed, reacting to her presence—it had activated on its own. Yuto ducked, rolled, and summoned a flicker of his old blade, now just a memory of what it once was.

“A summoned hero?” he demanded. “Who sent you?”

She didn’t answer. She cast a sigil mid-air with her free hand—black script, not of the world Yuto knew.

A new language of power.

He blocked again, barely holding back the force.

Something inside him stirred.

A memory… or a warning.

---

✧ ✧ ✧

Finally, he caught her arm mid-swing.

“Enough!” he shouted. “You’re not trying to kill me. Not really. You’re testing me.”

She froze. Just for a breath.

Then slowly lowered her weapon.

“…You passed.”

Yuto let her go, panting.

“You could’ve just asked if I was me.”

She stepped back, watching him.

“My name is Sera. I wasn’t summoned by a nation or a dying king. I was summoned by a sigil echo.”

Yuto blinked. “A what?”

“A fragment of power left behind when a world falls. They seek out the last person who carried the burden.”

He frowned. “You mean me.”

Sera nodded. “You weren’t the only thing that came through the Gate.”

---

✧ ✧ ✧

Later, they sat in the quiet of a ruined living room.

Yuto stared at his hand. “Why am I still connected? I destroyed the Gate.”

“You destroyed a gate,” she said. “But Veyrath left cracks. The Crimson Pact fractured, not vanished.”

Sera tossed him a sigil chip—something ancient, etched into obsidian.

“I found this at a shrine in Kyoto. And another girl in Osaka just awakened a binding mark. There are others, Yuto. They’re waking up.”

He looked her in the eye.

“What happens if they all wake?”

Sera's face darkened.

“Then the chains reform. And the Gate opens both ways.”

---